Heavily soiled wares can require multiple cleaning steps to remove the soils from the surfaces of the wares. Pots and pans used for prepping, cooking, and baking ware in full service restaurants can be particularly difficult to clean in a dish machine due to the caramelized soil baked on to the surface of the ware. Some full-service restaurants have attempted to overcome this issue by using, as a pre-step to washing the pots and pans in the dish machine, a 3-compartment sink for soaking the pots and pans. Exemplary soaking solutions include water, pot and pan detergent solutions, or silverware presoaks. Components of these compositions typically include metal protectors, surfactants, alkalinity sources and the like. Surfactants are the single most important cleaning ingredient in cleaning products. The surfactants reduce the surface tension of water by adsorbing at the liquid-gas interface. They also reduce the interfacial tension between oil and water by adsorbing at the liquid-liquid interface. When dissolved in water, surfactants give a product the ability to remove soil from surfaces. Each surfactant molecule has a hydrophilic head that is attracted to water molecules and a hydrophobic tail that repels water and simultaneously attaches itself to oil and grease in soil. These opposing forces loosen the soil and suspend it in the water.
Surfactants do the basic work of detergents and cleaning compositions by breaking up stains and keeping the soil in the water solution to prevent re-deposition of the soil onto the surface from which it has just been removed. Surfactants disperse soil that normally does not dissolve in water. Environmental regulations, consumer habits, and consumer practices have forced new developments in the surfactant industry to produce lower-cost, higher-performing, and environmentally friendly products.
Antimicrobial agents are chemical compositions that are used to prevent microbiological contamination and deterioration of products, materials, and systems. Antimicrobial agents and compositions are used, for example, as disinfectants or sanitizers in association with hard surface cleaning, food preparation, hospitality services, hospital and medical uses, and hand soaps. There remains an ongoing need for antimicrobial compositions having the capability to be more concentrated while having foam stabilization for use compositions. Many cleaning compositions include a foaming agent to increase contact time on surfaces to be cleaned. Such compositions are presently used in many applications, such as retail, industrial and institutional including grease cutters, clinging lime scale removers, shower wall cleaners, bathtub cleaners, hand sanitizing gels, disinfectant gels, hand-soaps, teat dips, coatings, stabilized enzymes, structured liquids, and the like.
There remains a need highly active non-antimicrobial and antimicrobial compositions for various applications of use. However such formulations present challenges for foaming profiles and desired viscoelasticity less than about 900 cPS or preferably less than about 500 cPs, including compositions having an actives level of 30% or greater.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the claimed disclosure to develop concentrated and use liquid compositions and methods of using propoxylated compounds, including propoxylated surfactants and polymers, for various applications, including for example, soil removal applications to provide desired antimicrobial efficacy.
Still further, it is an object of the present disclosure to provide enhanced soil removal in non-antimicrobial applications employing propoxylated surfactants and polymers for foam stabilization in highly active compositions. In each aspect of the disclosure suitable foam stabilization is desired while providing safe, environmentally friendly and economically feasible compositions for various applications of use.
Other objects, advantages and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following specification taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.